


the pride of st. lukso

by cafeanna



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, But You Have to Squint With Me, Confessions, Kurapika Is Kinda Mean, Kuroro Doesn't Get His Nen Back Because I Said So, M/M, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29216847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafeanna/pseuds/cafeanna
Summary: He looks a far cry from the vicious angel that stood over him in Yorknew, but leagues beyond that horrified child that he had left in the ruins of Lukso, blooded palms and soot-stained clothes.OR, Kuroro invites Kurapika over and regrets it.
Relationships: Kurapika/Kuroro Lucifer | Chrollo Lucifer
Comments: 15
Kudos: 47





	the pride of st. lukso

**Author's Note:**

> *hands you a shovel* I don't want to write 13k of context, please enjoy the food.
> 
> role reversal without sacrificing their personalities

The night begins like this—

Deep winter, when the sun swings low and the moon chips away, in the city, the evening is full of artificial stars. Apartments and offices buildings, stoplights and traffic signs; the frigid breeze of the evening catching breath in red mouths. Wind-chaffed skin, tussled hair, pink cheeks—the enticing image of Kurapika on his doorstep, dressed in black like death incarnate, his coat draped over his lithe shoulders like a cape.

He is undoing a button on the clasp of his glove when he says, “I have to admit I was surprised when you gave me the address.” Oppose to nothing his eyes flicker over Kuroro’s shoulder, peering in. “Didn’t think you would live above Fifth.”

And so, it begins.

“Hello to you too, angel.” Kuroro draws, teasing as he steps aside to let him in. He smells like the night, crisp and cool, the edge of nicotine, and something a bit like tin. “Nice to see the weather hasn’t cooled your temper.”

Kurapika glances back at him when the door shuts. Ignoring his comment, Kurapika’s brow rises. “Do I want to know whose apartment this is?”

“Mine.”

The first truth of the evening.

It comes so easily.

Kuroro’s two-bedroom is something of his own marvel, filled wall-to-wall with his pickings of cons past. A comfort. A constant. A halfway point for this meeting of minds.

He steps into his living room and Kurapika follows him, tongue sharp. “Did our dear friend fall from your good graces then?”

Kuroro hides the minute shift of his shoulders. “Don’t you worry. Our dear friend is only running an errand for me.” Kurapika sends him a side-eye and Kuroro responds with a polite smile, settling into a chair beside the only lit lamp. The stack of books at his feet a testament of waiting.

Kurapika remains in the corner of the room, closest to the door, taking in the space and Kuroro does too.

He likes his mismatched furniture, the scattering of art, the softness in the edges from the lit candles. He likes eclectic spaces, pieces and prints, but he is still figuring out how he feels about Kurapika in the midst of it—wingtip shoes on his tapestry carpet, hands tucked in his pockets, eyeing an obscure watercolor recreation a little too close to the real thing.

A beat.

Then, two.

Kurapika has a secretive smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. As if Kuroro hasn’t just admitted to sending Hisoka on a mission. His eyes slide away again to flirt over the stems of the two wine glasses Kuroro had gotten out, not that he expected to use them. “Why did you call me?”

Despite his initial reaction, he keeps his expression neutral, watching Kurapika skim his finger across the rim of the glass. A touch so delicate, he almost expects it to draw sound. Kuroro settles on the graze of his fingers, Kurapika’s hair in the candlelight and thinks, for a moment, for a second, that he might regret answering—

“I wanted to see if you would come.”

Kurapika’s eyes tip to his, deeper than the drink. His mouth curls. “Why did you call me, Kuroro?”

There is a dip in his voice whenever Kurapika says his name.

The roll of the _q_ sliding into a soft rumble of _r_ ’s and the invariable accented edge. Not Ryuseigai, but Kurtan. It’s horrible how nice it sounds falling from his mouth, no hesitation, no question. It is almost as if he practiced it. Stood in the mirror and rolled the raw materials of his name across his tongue before letting them slip off like a blooming flower.

It used to make him smile, knowing how diligent his self-proclaimed enemy had been in learning his name, something so basic and yet—prominent.

Standing out like veins under skin.

That prodding needle of guilt nip into him again, pulling a deep drink until all he can think of in the blackout are Uvogin and Pakunoda. The jagged pieces of them still engrained in his soul. Smiling at a joke, raising a glass.

His eyes fall to the open collar of Kurapika’s dress shirt, the loosening of the first few buttons, the tie long gone. A mob boss in the off hours. Prim, pressed, rumpled at the collar. His coat draped across the back of a chair, folded.

He looks a far cry from the vicious angel that stood over him in Yorknew, but leagues beyond that horrified child that he had left in the ruins of Lukso, blooded palms and soot-stained clothes.

If Kuroro leans close enough, he is sure he could smell the heat of the funeral pyres risen to something molten. Every broken part of Kurapika revitalized into something stronger. Gold-veined, bronze soaked, immaculate.

Something divine crafted from violence.

“I suppose I was feeling lonely.” He admits after a moment too long. He has Kurapika’s eyes again, but he does not meet them. Instead, he sits fixated on the bow of his lip and the faint freckle pressed there. “And I’m not used to being alone.”

“You should try it,” Kurapika says, just as gentle in his cruelty. “You might learn something about yourself.”

His mouth kicks into his cheek. “I’ve been alone too much.”

“So, you called me.”

“I called you.”

It’s a confession like everything else. A breakdown of dialing numbers and chipping facades, heart in his throat, and soft candlelight. Confessionals too early on Sunday mornings, both of them in their worn clothes and tired eyes, bodies beaten from the break of the day. A romantic setting for two unromantic people.

Kurapika’s body tilts on its axis. Tension flirting the length of his spine.

“And you just wanted,” His fingers drum across the table, nails neat like military headstones clicking against the edge, “some company for the evening?”

His gaze tips and lands back on the wine glasses, one used, red staining the whisper-thin insides and the corner of Kuroro’s mouth. Kurapika looks almost offended, knuckle folding. “You know I don’t drink.”

Kuroro licks his lips, suddenly parched. “I figured I would ask.”

Kurapika makes a soft noise—a scoff, a hum—gentle on his tongue, more word than sound, but they lapse into silence together. The record player spinning a tempered beat, a climatic rise to the knot in his throat.

He feels the seconds pass, a suspension like a tightrope above all else between them sinking with impossibility. They would stay like that forever, until Kurapika moves, body shifting as he crosses the room, making his way towards him.

His footsteps falling from carpet to hardwood, shadows corroding his face into a mask.

In this close of proximity, Kuroro knows he should smarten, straighten his spine and rise, but the languid gait of Kurapika’s hips and the ease of a buzz leaves him feeling lazy in his seat, only leaning up when Kurapika comes to halt.

Like this, Kurapika seems to tower over him. He is powerful in the cut of his shoulders, the long lines of his body, and the stubborn set of his jaw. All the luxurious trappings of ease with none of the relief.

He can feel himself steeling as Kurapika bends at the waist, hands against his shoulders. It’s more innate than instinct, following the guiding hand, leaning into touch. The hands that destroyed him sliding off his shoulders against his chest, pushing air from his lungs.

To think that Kurapika makes him feel like _this—_

That it is Kurapika that makes him feel _alive,_ rising against the gooseflesh brush of fingers and fangs in his mouth, a perfect monster for Kurapika’s cautionary bedtime story.

He can feel the warm breath of Kurapika’s mouth against him, those whisper-drags of lips and skin, thumbs smoothing against his throat and jawbone. The intimacy of it—warm breath, cold fingers—feels like the flat drag of a blade against his skin, close as friends, as his friends, as _lovers._ A touch so foreign now, it escapes him, but despite the sordid pleasure of it all, Kurapika’s mouth does not find its sin against his.

He is left suspended, peaked, waiting until Kurapika presses his mouth against the swell of his cheek, beneath the hollow of his eye.

Lips loose, tasting the dry tears on his skin.

Its all Kuroro can do to sit there. Mouth parting, losing focus. 

He tips his face against that mouth and preens. The low mumbles of words like a prayer, the firm hands, the soft mouth, he could fill himself with the whole of Kurapika and feel holy. This one constant, this creature that hated him more than he dared to speak, louder than he could hear.

“I think I would ruin you.” Kurapika says, skimming his lips across his cheek, edging to the corner of his eye into his hairline. His voice a sleepy mumble and yet so, so _present,_ it breaks the spell of his mouth and the tip of his tongue.

“Would you?”

He is unsure if it is meant as a threat or a prediction, but it leaves him breathless in the aftermath. 

“Would I?” Kurapika sighs and, with a tilt of his head the glimmer of his lone earring catches against his lobe—an elegant chain of silver, knotted at the end with a chip of garnet. “You tell me,” he murmurs, leaning back to look at him properly and Kuroro leans up under the guide of his hands. “Where do your feelings for me lie? In your heart? Surely not.” The thumbs against his cheeks draw low, soothing lines, silk-satin against the blade of his words. “Your mind knows better. Your mouth? Your teeth would only want to cut—”

His hand banks down his chest, resting against his abdomen. Tense. Kurapika’s eyes dance in the light.

“Your desire for me sits in your stomach. If I let you, you would devour me whole and leave nothing left.”

Kuroro does not take his eyes from that stare.

That piercing stare, like rocks in a riverbed, clear water icing down his spine. Kurapika’s eyes, his natural eyes, hued like marble and twice as hard, carved into something devastating and beautiful.

The edge of burnt umber lingering beneath.

Want and wanting.

It’s not something he can so easily deny, especially not this close.

And he is so close now, lips hovering in that cavernous space between their bodies, not touching, not feeling. He doesn’t want _this,_ this iced exchange of powerplay, Kurapika cutting his teeth in villainy and gentleness disguised as sweetness. Honey-laced cyanide.

He wants his mouth. He wants that body.

He reaches out, touching the seam of Kurapika’s thigh. His hand guiding down to the curve of his knee, feeling the definition of muscle and expensive material before pulling the leg to bend—

Kurapika frowns.

And the hand on his face slips down.

That warmth yanks from his chest, a knot at the edge of a cord, a missed note, a short breath—the chain-laced grip on his throat trapping him back against the chair, fingers curling against the bunching tendons and slips of breath. His nostrils flair in retaliation, but instinct has his claws retreating.

Kurapika is still staring at him, serene as a still water. That cool, unaffected air breathing into his lungs on the first ragged inhale. Kuroro curls his fingers against the arms of the chair, nails digging, the iron-clad lock on his nen singing through his veins.

Kurapika’s mouth crumbles into a fold of displeasure. His eyes falling closed, a whisper of sunset prism beyond his sun-tipped lashes.

A deep exhale brushes his mouth.

“You’re not ready yet.”

Kuroro feels himself stiffen, question burning in his mind beyond the spotted mold of rage.

He takes a deep breath—throat bobbing under Kurapika’s warning palm—and calms himself.

“What are you going on about?”

It’s meant to sound exasperate—because he is. He is _exasperated,_ and annoyed, and tired, and goddamnit, he sounds desperate. Whiny. Like he needs it.

Needs are necessities.

Kurapika is a firm _want,_ a check to be marked, a gift in his mouth. Delivered sun-soaked and breathy, tipped back against his bed, his desk, the spare space of his counter—

Eyes slide open again, soft taupe revealing no anger, no judgement, but a steely resolution. “You’re not ready for me to tear up your life yet.”

_Haven’t you done that already?_

There is the part of him that wants to snarl that, cut the words with his teeth and break the moment in a fissure press, crack the edges and disassemble this struggle between them for what it is. Playacting.

All the little woeful moments between them; the dry press of Kurapika’s mouth against his untouched skin filling him with wintry shivers, not something he wants. Not something that flickers in his mind against the naked press of another. Daydreams of these indulgent scenes between twilight and dusk, filled with unsettling intimacy, distance through sober glasses, and the philosophy of faerietales, monsters and fair princes—

But he knows, he knows that better than anything that lying with Kurapika would be more than stripping off his clothes and bedding down with a stranger.

There is history between them. Festering.

Kuroro’s pastime of indulgences, fantasies of the roof of his mouth, the curve of his spine, the fullness of a thigh were secondary to the harrowing reality of it. Hunger abating against thin ribs. That giving into his desire for Kurapika would be as symbolic as running up the white flag.

Giving in and giving up.

Useless. Nenless. Nameless.

His voice, when he speaks, doesn’t sound like his own.

“Who said I wanted that?”

“You _do._ ” Kurapika cants his head, so sure. Candlelight in his hair shining gold. “But you _don’t._ You’re not ready. You—” Kurapika looks at him again, the pin-prickle of anticipation writhing up his shoulders, lifting them higher. “You still love them more than you want me, and that loyalty is tearing you apart.”

Kurapika sounds so horrendously _pleased_ with himself, Kuroro can only choke on the deep dragging inhale.

“You think I want you that badly?” Bluffing.

And Kurapika can only look amused. Mused by his tone, the cut, the girdle of teeth sinking into words. Although Kurapika is interested in him, pays attention to him, makes him _feel_ —he can be downright cruel in his affections. He leans in, breath warm against Kuroro’s mouth.

Kuroro’s palms slipping against the armrest beneath them. Nails aching.

“Hm, the dilated pupils, the wandering eyes, the fist-curved hands,” Kuroro can only look at his mouth as he shapes the words. The steep pauses, the sighs. “It’s all textbook. Physiological. I can read that.”

Then, _then—_ the barriers of touch are open with a gentle press, fingers slipping soft and too-light over his rumpled shirt as if he were fragile, made of glass. The thumb on his throat strokes down and then, Kurapika is against him, mouth tipping, nose brushing, _close,_ and Kuroro can only sit, muscles locked as that body presses into him. Everything he wanted, cutting against him like a grate.

Kurapika sighs, contented.

If not, a little sad.

“But, you forget I have eyes everywhere.” His voice dips at the end, as if acknowledging some sick joke. The hand holding Kurapika aloft falls against his chest, palm flat against his heart, fingers slipping beneath his shirt. “And I have a finger on your pulse. I can feel your desire for me as if it were my own.”

Kurapika almost looks soft.

He tucks his nose against his hair, mouth skimming his ear, soft as a shiver. “It’s a sickly thing, isn’t it?” He whispers, pins and needles. “Wanting someone and hating them so much?”

The hand on his throat presses harder, culling his attention, reminding him.

Kuroro can feel the shift of the ground beneath him. That fine, dreadful thought that something other than himself might exist in his bones. That hairline shiver that feels more ripple than skin. His stomach feels empty as Kurapika’s palm eases. “Please.” His is surprised to find that whispered plea falls from his own lips, air-drunk. His hand is on Kurapika’s elbow, thumb pressing against the bend.

_For what, for what, for what—_

He tries, “Don’t.”

It doesn’t taste right.

It doesn’t quite _fit._

It’s not what he means to say, it’s not what he wants—

“Of course not, _Kuroro._ ” Kurapika’s hand slides up from his chest, a parody of comfort that he finds himself sinking into. Intimacy that he can no longer deny, touch that he craves—and the heat of Kurapika’s body is _magnificent,_ and the sound of his name on his lips is addicting, the bitter flavor of knowing and Kurapika’s thumb smooths against his throat. Cooing to him as if he were still sharp-toothed and deadly. “When you’re mine, I want you mine entirely.”

The words fall off his tongue with the grace of whispers. A confession like Kuroro’s own, but sweeter in its secrecy.

Kurapika means giving up.

He knows that.

He’s _always_ known that.

He can feel the tug of chains around his heart. He can hear the rattling shudder of them. The peaks of gooseflesh chasing across his skin, sinking his stomach into nausea.

“As your dog?”

Kurapika’s hand loosens on his throat and slips under his chin, thumb against his lower lip, pressing back into teeth. His face lifts into the tilt of that hand. His mouth dry. His tongue bruised from teeth.

Kurapika is backlit with candlelight, soft shadows and halos. His expression a horrible fresco of sympathy, an ill-refined curve in his cheek. “On my leash,” he says, so gently Kuroro would have thought he was taking him to bed.

Numbness needles his skin as Kurapika leans into him again, magnificent and sweet and cyanide, warm mouth against his crown as Kurapika kisses his forehead, kisses the black-inked crux of his cross. Lingering, like a lover, hand gentle on his chin. “And then I’m going to bury you,” he says voice like the frigid breath of outside, “Right beside me, in the grave you dug for the both of us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Did this take three tries? Yes. Drafts one and two were horrendous. I just want Kurapika to be in a power-placement more akin to Kuroro, but Kuroro's confidence comes from his friends and security, so I took it from him and have him hanging around Yorknew where Kurapika is building his confidence with his mob boss deal. I didn't want to write 16k of Kuroro having a breakdown and wanting Kp, so I shaved off 2k off this and made it sit in the corner until I liked it. 
> 
> Regardless, hello, somehow this spawned from my notes that Kurapika plans on pegging Kuroro within an inch of his life when they finally sleep together. C'est la vie. Feel free to yell at me!
> 
> -cafeanna


End file.
